Are you ordering for a School? Order direct from us for our Education Discount

Philanthropy is important to us and we want to help primary schools teach their children STEM skills and computational thinking – a key part of the school curriculum around the world

Ironic Thought operates an education discount scheme (our Primary School Programme). If you belong to a school (we will need to verify this) and would like to place an order for at least five games then you are eligible for our education discount if you order direct through us.

Our Education Discount scheme allows education institutions (i.e. Primary Schools) to buy Bits and Bytes for a reduced price starting from £12.50 (the more you buy the cheaper it is).

If your school is based in the UK then this price includes postage (for other countries please contact us for postage costs). We ship Bits and Bytes world-wide.

To order at least five (5) games of Bits & Bytes under our Primary School Programme (Education Discount scheme) please click here.

Bits & Bytes has been designed to be a fun experience for children between the ages of 4 and 11, whilst teaching them the basics of programming/coding logic. As such it is an invaluable teaching tool for primary schools.

It is of paramount importance that schools have tools at their disposal to help teach children STEM skills and fundamentals of coding, this is especially important given governments around the world are now making it compulsory to teach children. The problem faced by Primary Schools in meeting this requirement is compounded by many factors. For example: many primary school teachers do not have prior knowledge of coding/programming, how do you teach children computer coding when they are still learning to read and write, and there are many more.

Following is a summary of the requirements of the National Computing curriculum in the UK that commenced in September 2014:

A broad overview of computer science, which is suitable for children aged between 4 and 7

At the moment primary schools face a tough challenge complying with the new national computing curriculum. There are few tools and most of them involve considerable expense that most primary schools can not afford.

The game is a great platform for encouraging the use of coding vocabulary – pupils were eager to teach each other the game and resources were easy to organise. It was useful to have the children learning computer skills without the need for a PC“Ms Shannon Thewlis - Year 5 and 6 school teacher

Bits & Bytes has been designed to be flexible (it can be made easier to play or harder to suit a wide range of ages). It is compact for easy storage. It encourages creativity by allowing children to customise the rules. It is very affordable (less than 10% of the price of a cheap netbook). And most importantly it helps children to develop the required mindset for coding, as well as teaching the fundamentals of problem solving, issuing instructions and more. As such we want to see Bits & Bytes as one of the tools primary schools use to meet the requirements of the National Computing Curriculum, to help them teach children STEM skills and the fundamentals of computer coding.

Some companies are charging primary schools thousands of pounds to equip teachers with the knowledge they require, while other businesses are promoting the purchase of expensive hardware (like computers, robots, tablet devices, remote control toys and electronic kits). We’re taking a different approach!

We recognise the financial strains schools are under, and we want to provide teachers with one of the tools to help them teach STEM skills and the fundamentals of computer coding to children without “breaking the bank”.
We’re calling it our “Primary Schools Programme”.